Earlier in my career, I worked as a designer, paired with a copywriter, producing marketing materials for a range of clients. Every brief looked roughly the same on paper. Same deliverables, same timelines, same process.

But two very different things kept happening.

Some brands made the work feel inevitable. Their position was defined, their point of view was clear. We knew what they stood for, what they’d never say, what they cared about beyond the transaction. The materials we created could only have come from that company. There was nothing else they could have been.

Other brands hadn’t done that work. Their brand was a visual style and a tagline, maybe. We’d produce materials that technically looked fine: well-designed, well-written, professional. And completely interchangeable. You could have swapped in any competitor’s name and nothing would have felt wrong. That gap between the two had nothing to do with design or copywriting. The conditions for specificity either existed or they didn’t.

For years, though, the gap stayed hidden. The time, the cost, the craft involved in making anything created enough friction to give everything a thin layer of distinctiveness. Even generic thinking looked somewhat particular once a talented team had spent weeks shaping it.

Then AI removed that friction.

And now I see a lot of anxiety from business owners asking how to stand out in a world where everything sounds the same. Consumers are getting sharper at spotting content that feels frictionless: smooth prose that could have come from anyone, about anything, for anyone. That instinct is only going to keep developing. The concern is fair.

But the panic tends to land on the wrong thing. The problem was never the tool.

Because what AI actually did was make visible something that was true all along. Authenticity is about conditions, not content. It shows up when every choice an organization makes (its pricing, its people, its process, its design) comes from the same source. Those choices align, and customers sense coherence before they can name it. You don’t inject that quality into a piece of content. It emerges, or it doesn’t, from everything an organization has already decided about what it is.

Which means a brand that has genuinely built a point of view, made real decisions about what it stands for and what it refuses to do, cannot be made generic by a content tool. The specificity is too structural for that. And a business that hasn’t done that work will produce generic content with any tool. AI makes the absence harder to dress up.

The red flag I look for is a brand that sounds like anyone. Not an underdeveloped visual identity. Not a website that needs refreshing. A brand where the messaging describes a category rather than a company. Where they’ve articulated what they do, but not what they think, or how they think, or why any of it matters.

One question tends to cut through it: Could only this company have made this?

Not “is this well-written?” Not “is this on-brand?” Those questions can both be answered with a yes by content that is still entirely generic. Could only this company — with this history, these values, this point of view, these specific people behind it — have made this?

If the answer is maybe, the brand hasn’t been built yet. What’s been built is a style. And styles are borrowed. Brands grow from the inside out.

The organizations cutting through right now aren’t louder. They’re clearer. Their marketing doesn’t explain who they are. It demonstrates it. That clarity comes from decisions made long before the content was written. About what the organization stands for. What it refuses to be. What it implies through every operational choice it makes.

Do that work, and the tool genuinely doesn’t matter.

A scent is not chosen; it emerges. But emergence is not random—it is shaped by conditions. Inputs, habits, patterns, behaviors. Brand works the same way: it is the byproduct of what you consistently do, not what you declare. You don’t control the scent directly. You control the inputs that create it. Conditions shape the chemistry; the scent is merely the consequence.

Despite this, many leaders believe their central challenge is explaining their value more clearly. They polish language, refine messages, and labor over ways to persuade customers of who they are. But humans don’t decide based on what a company says. They make decisions based on the environment a business creates—the atmosphere they inhale the moment they encounter it.

The Psychology of Choice

People are autonomous. You cannot engineer their beliefs, manufacture their conclusions, or move them like pieces on a chessboard, as Adam Smith warned centuries ago.1 What you can shape—what every organization must shape—are the conditions that influence the inferences people make on their own.

This psychology is well-documented. Humans resist persuasion because it threatens their autonomy; they move toward choices they believe originate within themselves. Self-Determination Theory2 reinforces this insight: behavior changes when people feel ownership, not when they feel pressure.

Jim Camp, one of the most respected negotiation coaches of the past several decades, put it bluntly in Start with No: “Facts do not win negotiations,” he wrote. “Facts come later, because they mean nothing to the stomach.” We decide emotionally, instinctively, and then we gather evidence to support the feeling. We all behave this way. We encounter brands we’ve never purchased from yet feel drawn to them. We browse their website, unconsciously searching for clues that validate our instinct—they pay their workers fairly, they’re climate-conscious, they give back. Rationality becomes a scavenger hunt for emotional validation.

Many leaders think of branding as something that looks good on swag, or the more seasoned may think of it as a method to fix a messaging problem—something marketing must solve. In practice, brand is a management function. It emerges from operations, priorities, behavior, pace, and choices: the controllable conditions that form a company’s atmosphere. It is not the story you tell; it is the system you run.

Subscribe now

Where This Understanding Began

This question—what can leaders actually control, if not minds?—eventually became the heart of a branding methodology I call Conditions Design. But its origins began long before I had the language for it.

My recognition of this human behavior started early. In a search for financial stability, my father and I moved frequently throughout my childhood. Each new town, each new school, was an unfamiliar ecosystem. Entering those spaces, I learned quickly that people form impressions before they hear your story. You don’t get to explain yourself first—you imply yourself first. I needed to convey that I understood what was happening around me: what mattered, what didn’t, and how people connected. Observation became my survival skill. Long before I understood brand strategy, I understood implication—the quiet signals that tell people what to conclude without ever being told.

Observation helped me belong. I paid close attention to how people behaved, what they responded to, and how they signaled acceptance. I was naturally funny, and observational humor became the quickest path to connection. For my entertainment, I watched experts in observational humor, people like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Robin Williams, and without realizing it, their humor introduced me to philosophy. They revealed the human condition with precision—its contradictions, absurdities, and desires—and did so in a way that allowed people to feel seen.

When I entered the world of brand and business strategy, the pattern I’d learned in childhood reappeared. Customers behaved just like those schoolyard crowds. They made snap judgments based on signals organizations didn’t realize they were broadcasting. Pricing implied one thing, responsiveness another, operational rhythms another still. Visual design revealed values. Hiring decisions revealed priorities. Even subtle behavioral details—timing, tone, pace—created meaning. By the time someone read a value proposition, their instincts had already rendered a conclusion. Research confirms what experience whispered: people decide in milliseconds, and analysis trails behind.

The Discipline of Conditions Design

Persuasion is exhausting. It requires constant energy and often leads to fragile belief. Coherence, however—when what an organization does aligns with what it intends to imply—naturally creates conviction. Customers sense truth before anyone articulates it. This is the seed of Conditions Design, a methodology shaped first by lived experience and then refined through formal study.

Over time, I immersed myself in the work of Roger Martin, who reframed strategy as a series of interdependent choices—where to play and how to win—that shape the environment a company creates. April Dunford clarified that positioning succeeds only when it maps to the customer’s goals and triggers the assumptions that lead them naturally toward your value. Daniel Kahneman showed that fast, intuitive thinking drives most decisions, and that slower analysis often steps in afterward—usually to rationalize those decisions, and only occasionally, with real effort, to correct them. Robert Sapolsky’s work shows that behavior is deeply determined by biological and environmental context, and that what we call “intent” is itself shaped by those factors. And Marty Neumeier’s articulation of brand as a “gut feeling” grounded everything in the truth that people respond to what they sense, not what they’re told.

Conditions Design brings these insights into a single discipline. It helps leaders recognize what they control—pricing, operations, behavior, design, pace, practice—and configure those choices so the organization implies the value it hopes to convey. It ties theoretical strategy to lived reality and makes implications intentional.

Rational factors still matter. They screen out the unfit. But once alternatives appear equally rational—which they often do—decisions tilt back toward trust, coherence, and perceived alignment.

What I’ve Observed in Practice

In my work at State of Assembly, the branding agency and I founded in 2014, I’ve seen that organizations rarely struggle because their value is weak. They struggle because their conditions contradict the value they want to be recognized for. A company may believe it is premium, yet its operations are built for speed over craft. It may believe it is innovative while making decisions that are risk-averse. It may believe it is reliable while tolerating inconsistency. Customers don’t need to articulate these contradictions; they sense them. And once sensed, the organization is forced into explanation—trying to argue what its behavior fails to support.

Conditions Design reverses that dynamic. It aligns the signals a company emits so customers sense the value before they analyze it. When the value is obvious, the purchase becomes obvious too.

In practice, I’ve seen this dynamic hold across education, tourism, and professional services. A private middle school couldn’t change the fact that its three-year structure disrupted the K–8 or 6–12 continuity many families preferred, but it could highlight a condition it uniquely served: the critical neurological window of early adolescence. A tourism region couldn’t control its lack of hotels, but it could choose an audience—people seeking a spontaneous day of restoration rather than vacationers burdened by planning—and suddenly a weakness became an implication of ease. A restoration company couldn’t control the chaos of homeowner emergencies, but it could redefine its customer, shifting its operations toward the steadier needs of property managers and transforming crisis work into long-term partnership.

In each case, Conditions Design focused attention on what leaders could actually control, aligning those conditions with the value they wanted people to feel.

Why This Matters Now

There is a reason Conditions Design feels particularly urgent at this moment. In the era of artificial intelligence, explanation has become abundant—any organization can generate polished language instantly. Comparison is effortless, allowing customers to verify whether experience matches story within seconds. And reactance is heightened, as people instinctively distrust anything engineered too neatly to persuade them.

AI can imitate language, but it cannot inhabit character. It can accelerate operations, but it cannot author discipline. AI may help surface the conditions available to a business, but only leaders can choose which conditions to design, strengthen, or remove. The more AI saturates communication, the more advantage shifts to those who align what they control with the truth they want customers to feel.

The Scent You Leave Behind

Looking back, I can see that Conditions Design didn’t originate from a single insight. It emerged gradually—from displacement, from observation, from humor, from a lifelong study of how people recognize truth.

In the end, a brand is a scent: the inescapable smell of your business, an atmosphere people detect instantly. Traditional branding tries to tell people what scent you have. Conditions Design focuses on what you control to shape what your brand actually is. And when you shape the source, customers don’t need to be convinced. They simply smell the scent—and the choice feels obvious.

Zachary Cavanell is the co-founder of State of Assembly, a brand strategy agency in Portland, Oregon. The full methodology of Conditions Design is outlined on the State of Assembly website; what precedes is the story of why it matters and where it came from.

When we sit down with a potential clients to discuss branding, a question that almost always comes up is: “Have you done work in our industry before?”

Sometimes the answer is yes. This lands well. The client relaxes. Sometimes the answer is no. A small tension enters the room: a quiet worry that we won’t understand their world.

It’s natural to want a partner who understands your world. But the real question isn’t whether they understand it. It’s whether they can help you change it. Industry experience gives comfort. Strategic capability gives momentum.

The issue is: you’re asking the right question for the wrong discipline.

Industry experience matters, but it matters differently

If you’re hiring a marketing agency to execute campaigns, knowing your industry matters immensely. They need to understand your media landscape, your audience’s behavior, your competitive tactics. Industry experience helps them work faster and smarter because marketing draws its power from precedent. It optimizes patterns that have proven effective.

Branding is different. Branding draws its power from perspective. It’s a different discipline entirely.

Marketing optimizes visibility. Branding defines meaning. And you can’t optimize meaning. You have to define it.

What configuration means

Branding determines whether your sales team and website tell the same story. Whether your operations and messaging deliver the same promise. Whether your hiring practices and positioning reinforce or contradict each other. Whether your pricing and value align in what they imply.

That’s configuration. It’s about system design. It changes how your organization makes decisions, attracts talent, and competes. When done right, it doesn’t just make you look different. It makes achieving your results easier.

Subscribe now

Flying to Reno

It might feel reassuring to know your pilot has flown into Reno before—that’s the kind of familiarity that helps with execution, with navigating known patterns. But branding isn’t about executing a known route. So wouldn’t you feel better knowing you’re flying with someone who’s experienced in various weather conditions? They know how to react when a flight doesn’t go as planned. They know what to prioritize if they lose a critical system mid-flight. They have a process for when the answer isn’t obvious.

Those questions reveal capability. The other reveals only familiarity.

Why industry fluency can sabotage branding

Industry experience rewards pattern recognition. Over time, those patterns become prescriptions. The agency stops questioning them. They see a problem and reach for what worked before because it did work. For someone else—in the past.

Familiarity is a retrospective skill. It’s built on what’s worked. But branding is a prospective discipline. It defines what will work next.

Marketing repeats and refines patterns that have proven effective. Branding invents the new patterns marketing will later optimize. That’s why industry familiarity, while valuable in marketing, can tether your branding to the logic of what’s known.

An agency that’s too embedded in your industry brings the same assumptions everyone else has. They’ll recommend what worked for your competitor because that’s what they know. They may miss the strategic openings precisely because they see the industry the way everyone else does.

To create something distinctive, you sometimes need strategic naïveté: just enough distance to see what insiders no longer notice.

Unknowing as a discipline

Great branding isn’t a prediction of the future. It’s creating the conditions where the right future become possible. That takes strategic imagination, not inherited habits.

You don’t need someone who knows your industry’s habits. You need someone who can see beyond them. Someone with the interpretive intelligence to identify the hidden patterns shaping your industry, not just operate within them.

That’s a trained practice: systematic curiosity under uncertainty. It’s the ability to ask “Does it have to be this way?” not because they don’t understand the rules, but because they understand which rules are serving you and which are holding you back.

The right questions to ask

If industry experience isn’t the right lens for evaluating a branding agency, what is?

Start with how they work, not where they’ve worked.

• How do they conduct research and discovery?

• What happens when they get a room full of stakeholders who can’t agree on anything? How do they navigate that?

• When they need to bring in outside perspectives, how do they do it without turning the process into a slog?

• How do they get a team excited about the work, not just willing to approve it?

Then get specific about what you’re dealing with.

• Maybe you’ve got a fifteen-person board and getting them aligned feels impossible.

• Have they worked through something like that?

Maybe you’re trying to speak to two different audiences with one brand.

• How have they handled that kind of tension?

• Did it work?

Ask them what they believe branding is.

• Is it about crafting the perfect message?

• Do they think the goal is to convince people to buy, or to create the conditions where buying you makes sense?

These conversations tell you what you need to know: whether this agency has the thinking, the process, and the resilience to solve your problems. Not whether they’ve worked with companies that look like yours.

Some Truth About Agency Selection

Why capability beats familiarity

The future of your brand can’t be built by people whose best arguments come from the past.

Your branding agency needs to understand how decisions happen (instantly, emotionally, through pattern recognition, not through logical analysis). They need to know how to design conditions, not just messages. They need the capability to configure your business (from operations to culture to market positioning) so that your value becomes obvious without having to be argued.

That capability doesn’t come from working with companies like yours. It comes from disciplined thinking, rigorous process, and the resilience to solve problems that don’t have obvious answers.

The marketer’s advantage is experience. The brand strategist’s advantage is the ability to reimagine experience.

Choose accordingly.

If you’re considering how to choose your next brand partner, start here: How State of Assembly works

When startups chase every opportunity, their resources become dangerously diluted. It’s hard to be the best at servicing any segment when you’re spread too thin. Companies attempting to serve multiple markets simultaneously end up with weakened products and confused messaging that fails to resonate with anyone.

Tech strategist Geoffrey Moore captured this dynamic in Crossing the Chasm. He compared scaling without a niche foothold to trying to light a log without kindling—the fire won’t catch. Without a focused beachhead, broad ambitions fizzle out.

The pattern has become clear to investors. Where startups once chased the largest possible markets with generalist products, the successful ones now excel in historically underserved niches. Rather than serving everyone adequately, these companies serve someone exceptionally well. How might we recognize when our desire for a large market is actually preventing us from building a great business? Focus drives momentum, while trying to do everything often results in doing nothing well.

Common Approaches vs. Niche Strategy

When founders recognize the challenges of going broad, they typically pursue one of two alternatives:

The Broad Market Play

Some startups maintain their intent to capture wide audiences across multiple segments. The theoretical upside—massive market size—sounds impressive to investors and promises substantial rewards.

However, the downsides consistently outweigh the promise. What would have to be true about your product for it to be equally compelling to both enterprise customers and SMBs, to both healthcare and financial services? Generic messaging fails to resonate deeply with any group. Products only superficially meet varied needs. Marketing budgets spread thin across channels. Without passionate core users, building momentum becomes nearly impossible.

As one investor noted: “In today’s crowded tech landscape, trying to be everything to everyone is no longer a competitive advantage.” The companies gaining traction are those going deep in specific domains. This broad strategy typically creates products that many find somewhat useful, but nobody truly loves.

Chasing Every Opportunity

Other startups adopt an opportunistic approach—pivoting or expanding with every customer request or market trend. This demonstrates flexibility and can generate short-term wins through disparate pilot projects.

Yet this reactive strategy leads to fragmentation. How might we distinguish between opportunities that strengthen our position and those that dilute it? The startup accumulates a patchwork of features for various audiences but no clear identity. Engineering and sales teams struggle to support five different use cases simultaneously. While saying yes to everything might bring early revenue, growth stalls without mastery or reputation in any single area. Building excellent solutions becomes impossible when constantly switching targets.

Both alternatives share a critical flaw: by stretching in all directions, young companies make no significant progress in any direction.

Sequential Market Domination

The ideal scenario allows startups to think big while starting small. In this perfect world, what would have to be true for a company to achieve billion-dollar scale by initially serving just one narrow segment? The answer lies in systematic expansion.

The playbook follows a clear sequence: identify a beachhead segment with pressing problems, tailor your product obsessively to that group, and become their undisputed go-to solution. This creates happy customers, strong product-market fit, and reputation for excellence.

Growth comes through systematic expansion from one conquered segment to adjacent ones. Each victory creates credibility and learnings that accelerate success in the next market—Moore’s “bowling pin strategy” in action. Success in dentistry leads naturally to orthodontics. Dominating salons opens doors to spas.

In this approach, current focus doesn’t limit future potential. By the time you serve broader audiences, you do so with proven solutions, reference customers, and cash flow from your initial niche. What initially looked small—dentists in one city—becomes massive when replicated globally. How might we identify which adjacent markets would be natural extensions of our initial niche? Once you’re best in your initial niche, adding products or entering verticals happens from a position of strength.

Perfect execution means growing one segment at a time until those victories accumulate into mainstream success, claiming the entire market systematically rather than haphazardly.

Embracing Niche-First Growth Strategy

This is where Focus Over Spread becomes essential—a strategic mindset that resists chasing every opportunity in favor of excelling in a well-defined niche.

But how might we know when we’re truly focused versus when we’re still trying to hedge our bets? In practical terms, Focus Over Spread means intentionally narrowing your target market to a segment you can serve better than anyone else, then structuring your product and go-to-market efforts around that specialization. You’re not abandoning ambition; you’re sequencing it. Win a small market decisively first, then use that victory as a springboard to broader horizons.

Adopting this niche-first strategy requires a perspective shift. Founders and funders must recognize that focus isn’t the enemy of scale but rather its precursor. What would have to be true about a market for it to be worth dominating even if it seems small today? By owning your corner of the market, you effectively create a new category where your company leads. This approach establishes differentiated value that scattered strategies simply cannot replicate.

What Only Niche Focus Delivers

Focus Over Spread creates five distinct advantages that broad approaches cannot match:

Deep Product-Market Fit: Narrowing your segment allows you to build exactly what that group needs. How might we design our product differently if we only had to satisfy one specific type of customer perfectly? Instead of generic offerings with mediocre appeal, you create solutions that precisely solve target customers’ pain points—making adoption and love for your product far more likely.

Efficient Resource Deployment: Concentrating efforts on one market ensures precious time and money aren’t wasted courting disparate segments. Your team rows in the same direction, making go-to-market execution more effective and cost-efficient. Companies serving well-defined audiences consistently see sharper messaging, lower customer acquisition costs, and stronger retention.

Accelerated Traction with Loyal Customers: Becoming the go-to solution for a particular customer type is achievable when focused. You speak their language, build features they need, and create passionate early adopters. These customers feel understood, so they stick around and generate testimonials that become gold for convincing others in the same niche.

Credibility and Market Leadership: Dominating a niche lets you credibly claim leadership in that space. What would have to be true for customers to choose a generalist competitor over a specialist who deeply understands their specific needs? Being known as “the best solution for [specific customer]” builds trust with prospects and creates defensive moats. Your team develops domain expertise and meets specialized requirements that generalist competitors cannot easily replicate.

Strategic Scaling Platform: Perhaps most importantly, winning a niche provides a proven playbook and operational base for expanding into adjacent markets. Success in one segment knocks down the next, with new customers in related segments trusting you more because you’ve dominated similar niches. Early wins pave the way for larger victories.

Niche Focus in Action

Real-world success stories demonstrate how narrowing focus paradoxically leads to broader success:

Veeva Systems: From Pharma Niche to Billions

While most software startups in 2007 chased horizontal markets, Veeva’s founders asked themselves: “How might we become indispensable to one industry before trying to serve them all?” They went ultra-vertical, branding themselves as “Salesforce for pharmaceutical and biotech companies.” This contrarian focus proved brilliant. Veeva captured 80% of life sciences CRM market share and grew to $2.7 billion in annual revenue—all after raising just $3 million initially. The company reached $100 million ARR through deep penetration of a niche others dismissed.

Legal, Beauty, and Home Services Domination

Clio focused exclusively on practice management for small law firms, building lawyer-specific features until becoming a unicorn. Fresha zeroed in on beauty and wellness businesses, building enough traction to raise €150 million for expansion. Jobber started with landscapers and contractors, while Boulevard began with high-end salons—both achieved venture scale from seemingly small niches.

These companies prove that solving specific pain points for specific customers creates sustainable growth within that market, then logical extension into related markets. Focus-first growth is becoming the common path to winning in competitive environments.

Addressing Common Concerns

“Won’t focusing on a niche limit our growth?”

What would have to be true for a niche market to be too small to build a venture-scale business? A niche starts smaller than a broad market, but it’s only the starting point. Small beachheads expand dramatically—dentists in one city becomes a global opportunity when replicated across geographies. Once you’re the top solution in your niche, you gain credibility to branch into adjacent segments. Companies dominating one niche find it easier to eventually capture larger markets than companies that never win any segment outright.

“What if we choose the wrong niche?”

How might we validate a niche before fully committing our resources? Mitigate this risk through upfront research. Talk to potential customers, identify segments with urgent needs and willingness to pay. Look for reachable customers and underserved problems. If the first niche doesn’t work, pivoting within a focused strategy is easier than salvaging an over-scattered approach. Thoughtful validation and initial flexibility help ensure you’re focusing on a viable springboard segment.

“Are we leaving money on the table?”

Yes, you might turn away one-off sales initially to keep your product and messaging targeted. But what would have to be true for short-term revenue from random customers to be more valuable than long-term dominance of a specific market? This feels painful but proves wise. Chasing every revenue source pulls companies in too many directions, creating weaker offerings. Saying no now enables far greater revenue later. It’s better to have devoted fans in one segment than lukewarm users across many.

“Can niche-focused startups attract investors?”

Sophisticated investors understand that focused strategies often demonstrate clearer product-market fit, efficient growth, and better unit economics. How might we frame our niche strategy to show expansion potential rather than limitation? The key is communicating your vision beyond the niche. Acknowledge the initial niche as your beachhead, then lay out the expansion roadmap. VCs find realistic sequential growth plans more credible than vague claims about trillion-dollar markets with no concrete foothold.

Build Your Foundation First

Embracing Focus Over Spread means setting your startup up for sustainable success. What would have to be true about your current strategy for it to be genuinely focused rather than hedged? Remember: narrowing your focus isn’t about limiting potential—it’s about building a strong foundation for future growth. By conquering a well-chosen niche, you position your company to scale more impressively than if you tried doing everything at once.

Consider the companies in your portfolio or your own venture. How might we measure whether we’ve truly become the best in our initial target market? Have you achieved that distinction? If not, consider narrowing focus until you are—even if it means declining tangential opportunities. The market leadership you seek will come from being exceptional in one area first, then leveraging that excellence into adjacent arenas.

We invite you to share your experiences with niche versus broad approaches. Have you seen startups soar after tightening focus, or struggle because they didn’t? What questions do you ask yourself when evaluating market focus? Join the conversation in the comments below.

Leave a comment

In a world of finite resources, focus is a powerful force multiplier. The next time you evaluate a startup opportunity, ask: “What would have to be true for this company to win by doing less?” The case for niche positioning is compelling: by doing less initially, you accomplish far more eventually.

Zachary Cavanell is the co-owner and strategist for State of Assembly, a brand strategy agency for marketing. After decades of studying why good companies attract wrong-fit customers, Zachary has learned that success isn’t about being louder or following best practices. It’s about understanding human behavior, realizing you can’t make people buy, you can only configure the things you control in a way that compels them to buy.

If you need to transform from a business in adolescence to becoming what they’re meant to, reach out to State of Assembly. From brand architecture to naming, repositioning to activation strategies, we simplify complexity and reduce the risks of costly brand missteps.

Connect with State of Assembly

I believe that design by committee is the only way to do branding. This statement can make my peers in creative recoil.

A room fills with voices—eight executives, two department heads, three product managers. Everyone has opinions about the logo. The marketing director winces as the CFO suggests making it “professional.”

The creative director’s jaw tightens when someone mentions their competitor’s approach. And then someone says “I think it needs to pop!”

But here’s what I've learned after years of fighting this battle: when designers struggle with committee input, it reveals our inability to structure collaboration.

The Myth We Bought Into

The conventional wisdom runs deep: committees kill creativity. Non-experts push personal preferences over strategy. The pursuit of consensus transforms bold ideas into safe mediocrity.

I believed this for years. Made these arguments in countless client meetings. Watched promising concepts die slow deaths in conference rooms.

Then necessity forced a different approach. Large organizations with dozens of stakeholders, most carrying zero marketing experience. Traditional gatekeeping wouldn't work—we needed everyone aboard.

The revelation: Instead of protecting the creative process from the committee, we invited the committee into the creative process.

Why Every Other Approach Fails

Most agencies solve committee chaos through isolation. Creative teams disappear into conference rooms to protect artistic vision, then present finished concepts to stakeholders who never understood the reasoning behind decisions. Beautiful work crashes during implementation.

Internal marketing teams avoid external interference but lack the distance to challenge their assumptions. Safe thinking, rarely transformational.

Strategy consultants interview stakeholders, then craft recommendations in isolation. Smart frameworks with zero psychological ownership from the people who must execute them.

The solution harnesses collective intelligence while maintaining creative coherence—turning stakeholder input into strategic fuel rather than creative friction.

How to Use a Committee for Good

At State of Assembly, we developed the Activators methodology—a structured approach that transforms resistance into creative energy.

Here’s what we discovered: Brand stories don’t live in marketing departments. They scatter across organizations—in casual conversations, offhand observations, insights from the person who answers phones or the engineer who builds the product.

When we gather these voices, patterns emerge that no isolated team could generate.

The Psychology of Collaborative Creation

The “I Helped Build This” Effect
People value what they help create exponentially more than what they receive. When stakeholders participate in brand development rather than hear presentations about finished concepts, they form emotional connections to outcomes. They understand not just what the brand says, but why it says it.

The Creative Boost
Multiple perspectives force deeper thinking. They reveal assumptions, highlight what matters versus what sounds clever in isolation. The committee that kills creativity is the one excluded from understanding. The committee that ignites creativity is the one included in discovery.

How Our Clients Proved This Works

Columbia County Tourism: From “Unbrandable” to Unified

They were often told by stakeholders “You can't brand this county—there’s too many different things.” Our Activators process brought together diverse community voices who resisted unified branding.

The breakthrough came when stakeholders discovered how their perceived weaknesses—no major attractions, pass-through status, diverse communities—could become strengths for spontaneous day-trippers seeking casual exploration. The receptionist mentioned how visitors asked about “quick stops.” The tourism director noticed people loved discovering gems. The highway department provided insights about traffic patterns that revealed opportunity.

“All roads lead to roam” emerged from collective insight, not consultant recommendation. Internal skeptics became passionate advocates because they participated in the discovery rather than received a creative brief.

The Strategic Advantages Others Can’t Replicate

Implementation Without Resistance
Collaboration accelerates rather than delays execution. Internal teams don't need training to embody brand strategy because they helped create it. Customer service representatives know why certain language matters. Salespeople articulate unique value without referring to notes.

Authenticity Through Understanding
When internal stakeholders understand creative reasoning, brand expression feels natural rather than forced. This authenticity translates into customer experiences that feel coherent across every touchpoint.

Competitive Differentiation Through Internal Intelligence
The insights that emerge from structured internal collaboration reveal competitive advantages that external research misses. Organizations discover their hidden strengths rather than copy industry best practices.

Your Next Move

Stop treating stakeholder input as creative interference. Start treating it as competitive intelligence.

Your best ideas dying in committee? Our Activators methodology transforms your biggest implementation challenge into your strongest creative advantage.

Schedule a collaborative branding consultation where we’ll demonstrate how structured internal engagement enhances rather than compromises creative quality.

The committee isn’t your enemy. It’s your catalyst.

Instead of questioning my process, I figured I needed more experience. More client work, more industry knowledge, more campaigns.

What I needed? To stop trusting my instincts.

The breakthrough came when I enrolled in a behavioral decision-making course (originally to figure out what was wrong with my clients). First line from the instructor: "Your gut feeling is unreliable."

My immediate thought? "My gut says you’re wrong."

That thought, he explained, was the problem.

I've written about the framework that saved me from my own expertise. It's helped me avoid expensive mistakes since then—and it might save you from yours.

Good decisions don't come from confidence. They come from curiosity about what you're missing.

Read the whole, helpful, article here:

I've paid to learn I can be an idiot—most times I don't pay at all.

I wanted to know why clients kept telling me "That's not quite right," every time I presented what I KNEW in my gut was a perfect solution. So I enrolled in a behavioral decision-making course to understand what was wrong with them.

"Your gut feeling is unreliable. It can't be trusted." A brutal opening line from my instructor. My thought? "Well, your gut may be wrong, but mine is solid."

That thought, he explained, was the problem.

Familiarity breeds complacency.

Many of us know that most car accidents happen close to home. We've seen the evidence: California stops; bright plastic people waving flags reminding us of slow children at play; the scattered diamond-like broken glass and plastic bumper fragments swept to intersection corners. All proof that "when you get comfortable, you get sloppy."

For years that idea sat in my mind as golden truth. Anecdotally, it's true for some, but statistically not true.

Most accidents happen close to home because that's where we do most of our driving. If you did most of your driving in another state, the accidents you got into may make you believe that place was bad luck. Elementary statistics masquerading as insight about human nature.

I'm here to debunk "familiarity breeds complacency" in traffic accidents while proving familiarity breeds complacency as leaders.

My Creative Arrogance

For years, in creative agencies, I'd interview clients, review data, conduct focus groups, then disappear into a cave and emerge with the answer. Across conference tables, my client presentations were proud displays of complete confidence. Imagine my surprise when clients told me again and again, "That's not quite right.”

Instead of questioning my process, I figured what I needed was more experience—more client experience, more industry experience, more campaign experience. I calculated that experience would teach me what worked. What I learned was not to trust my instincts.

Yes, I learned skills, but I was seeing a pattern, getting the same results, because the experience-based information I was learning was not universal; it was limited to my context and perspective. I had to change my behavior. Don't trust my gut. This revelation came from desperation after enough polite rejections.

So if my gut was not to be trusted, who could I trust? It started with my wife (an empathetic ear with zero marketing experience), my business partner (a philosophical complement who catches what I can't see), customers in one-on-one conversations (who say things that never occur to me), and people who thought hiring my team was a mistake (whose objections reveal blind spots).

The Questions That Save Me From Myself

My expertise creates blind spots I don't know exist. When I'm certain about something, I force myself to ask what evidence would convince me I'm wrong. Asking, "What would I need to hear to change my mind?" allows me direction for opinions, and I realize I haven't tested my assumptions with enough people who think differently.

Roger L. Martin—former dean of the Rotman School of Management and one of the sharpest strategic thinkers—has a tool that has become my safety net when helping clients through their strategies: "What would have to be true?"

When a client wants to increase sales 200% by going online, their gut says "sure, everyone makes money online." But asking what would have to be true reveals the work: website development, advertising budget, product photography, inventory management, shipping logistics, customer service protocols.

Whether the answer is "yes, let's do it," or "not right now," the client is informed on what it takes.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Being Wrong

As a leader, the most dangerous moment isn't when you don't know something. It's when you're certain you do.

Familiarity breeds complacency. Just not where we think. It's not about rolling through stop signs in your neighborhood. It's about rolling through decisions with your expertise.

I still catch myself making confident predictions based on incomplete information. Still feel that pull of pattern recognition that whispers "I've got this." The difference is recognizing that feeling as a warning sign rather than validation.

Good decisions don't come from confidence. They come from curiosity about what you're missing.

A lesson worth paying for, even if it took me years to learn it.

What obvious decision are you about to make? What would have to be true to convince you it might be wrong?

Subscribe now

Making a logo isn’t that hard.

As a creative director, my statement might sound heretical. The truth is, anyone with basic software skills can arrange shapes and type on a screen. Crafting logos, selecting typography, arranging color palettes — these skills can be learned, practiced, refined.

The challenge of design lies elsewhere entirely.

The Real Work

I recently heard Malcolm Gladwell discuss his process with David Remnick. “I don’t find the writing part hard.” Malcolm said, “The hard part is, can I sit down with somebody and understand who they are and what they’re trying to say and represent that in a meaningful and powerful way.”

This insight cuts to the heart of effective branding.

I’ve spent twenty years perfecting my craft only to realize that mastery of design tools merely qualifies me to begin. The real design work lies in discovering what these visual elements should communicate. Who needs to see themselves reflected in this work? What essential truth about the organization must shine through?

It begins with questions, not answers.

Listening for Truth

The interview process serves as archaeological fieldwork. Clients possess their own truth, often buried beneath layers of daily operations and market pressures. Our role as a designer becomes that of careful excavator, brushing away sediment to reveal the artifacts of differentiation.

People speak their truth in fragments — an anecdote about company origins, a casual observation about client relationships, an aspiration mentioned in passing. These scattered pieces contain patterns only visible when properly arranged. The patterns emerge more quickly now, but never without careful listening first.

Between discovery and execution lies the crucial phase of synthesis.

The Workshop Phase

In workshops and our Practical Brainstorming sessions, client insights combine with our external perspective. This collaboration tests assumptions and validates ideas about organizational identity. The process demands both structure and spontaneity — frameworks that guide exploration without limiting discovery.

Brand insights often emerge from the gap between what an organization believes about itself and what its audience experiences. This gap contains opportunity.

Organizations, like individuals, often struggle to articulate their distinctive qualities. They know themselves too closely to recognize what makes them remarkable. We’ve sat with CEOs who can explain complex operational details but struggle to articulate why customers choose them over competitors.

Our external perspective creates necessary distance. When we reveal the emerging patterns, recognition dawns across the table: “Yes, that’s exactly who we are.”

From Understanding to Expression

The most valuable question remains: “What makes you different in ways that matter to others?”

Answering this requires the same patience an archaeologist brings to a promising site. Layer by layer, conversation by conversation, we uncover what was always there. The brand doesn’t emerge from our imagination — it emerges from careful excavation of existing truth.

This archaeological approach mirrors Gladwell’s insight perfectly. Just as he must sit with his subjects to understand “who they are and what they’re trying to say,” we must excavate organizational identity before we can represent it meaningfully. The writing — like the logo design — comes after the understanding.

Great brands aren’t built from aesthetics alone. They’re unearthed through patient excavation, then translated into forms others can recognize and value. The designer’s true skill lies not in creation, but in revelation — brushing away everything that isn’t essential until only the truth remains.

Learn Practical Brainstorming

When a server asks, “How was dinner?” Many of us respond to a meal not worthy of recommendation with, “It was good, thank you.” And really, why would a restaurant expect any other answer? A customer pays money for a meal, not to participate in market research. It takes less effort to never return to the restaurant than to converse about its needed improvements. There is always another restaurant.

The Problem with Asking

How do we know what our ideal customer wants?1 We can create surveys! We can ask, “What is one thing we could do to improve?” or “What would you suggest to help us improve our service?” Then, like a wish on a star, we can hope that we’re hearing from a truly representative sample of our customers—rather than just the most vocal ones—and have faith that we get an accurate recall of their experience, an authentic response with proactive actions—instead of suggestion to “Do better next time.” Hmmph.

Why not a focus group? We can get focused, in-depth qualitative insights that build off the multiple responses, revealing underlying motivations and attitudes…

But first, a question, you should answer out loud.

"How are you doing? Personally? Good, just fine?"

In the context of this situation, reading online by ourselves is not appropriate—or possible, really—for us to hear and get the details of your feelings. This is the flaw with focus groups and, in general, asking people's opinions. It's filtered.

People's behavior changes when they know they’re being observed—a phenomenon known as the Hawthorne Effect. The term comes from 1920s experiments at Western Electric's Hawthorne Works, where researchers found worker productivity increased simply because people knew they were being watched and studied—regardless of the actual changes being tested.

Despite that, we can get a lot of useful information from focus groups if we have the resources to organize and run them. I.e., you need money and time, a few bucks for participant incentives, facility rental, moderator fees, and analysis costs.

What If We Stop Asking?

What happens if we stop asking customers and maybe ask ourselves? What if, instead of hoping surveys will tell us the truth or focus groups will reveal a magic answer, we just... pretend? Pretend like some of the most successful business leaders in history did.

It's never been verified that Steve Jobs said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." And there's no proof that Henry Ford did either. However, through Steve and Henry's actions and behaviors, both of them seemed to believe it to be true. Each of them suggested that they knew more than the customer. Neither one of them asked for surveys or focus groups, and they didn't pull massive data sets to make decisions. Instead, like a 6-year-old, they pretended. What's not often talked about is the length to which they would pretend.

In his factory cars, Henry used to drive long distances across America. He even used to informally test his cars on long camping trips with Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs. They called themselves the "Vagabonds" and would spend weeks exploring the American countryside, sleeping in tents under the stars. Henry would meticulously observe how his vehicles handled different terrains, weather conditions, and the punishing demands of long-distance travel. He'd often stop to tinker with the engines, making mental notes about improvements needed for future models. These weren't just pleasure trips—they were rolling laboratories where Henry could experience firsthand what his customers would face on America's rough, early roads.

Steve used to spend much of his days using products, telling engineers how much he liked or hated using them. Before they released the iMac and iBook, he was seen pacing hallways, carrying them around from meeting to meeting. He would obsess over the smallest details – the curve of the handle on the iBook, the transparency of the iMac's case, even the sound the device made when it was turned on. He'd use prototypes at home, bringing them back with lists of changes: this button feels wrong, that startup time is too slow, this screen isn't bright enough. Steve would often call engineers in the middle of the night after discovering something that bothered him during his personal testing. He treated each product as if he were its first and most demanding user, believing that if it delighted him, it would delight others.

What's Stopping Us?

All of us, in some form, have imagined what our customers are going through. What stops us from doing what Henry and Steve did? We use mental shortcuts to jump to conclusions. We get overconfident because we “know this business better than anyone.” We stereotype our customers and make judgments of them because “we’ve seen it all before.” The most successful leaders and brands built in this country used empathetic, multi-perspective thinking. So how do we practice what these great American industrialists have? We pretend.

But what about all our data? Our analytics? Our quarterly reports? Here's the thing—pretending isn't about throwing information away. It's finding the problems worth measuring.

How do we pretend?

If we own a restaurant, we make reservations on the busiest night; we sit in the dining room, we feel our chair, we read the menu, taste the food, and pay as our customers do. These are the things worth measuring and fixing. Our data can tell us that customers aren't staying as long as they used to. But pretending tells us why.

In terms of cost and execution over results, there is no higher value in marketing or research than pretending. It will help us build better products and better services. You want to play pretend?

Subscribe now

As business owners, we have a tendency to think of business like this: We’ve got an idea that fulfills a need. People tell us they like the idea, and we have investors who believe it will work. We’re in business!

This can be deceptive math that takes our euphoric, indomitable spirit on a slide of self-doubt and distress. Rather than an addition problem, business should be regarded as a multiplication problem.

Though our business concept may fulfill a need, and people say they’d buy it or invest in it, if our company doesn’t produce a customer, it is not a business. We’re not “in” business. 

The only valid objective of business is to create customers.1 The most excellent service, solution, or product will never outweigh the value of someone willing to pay. The others will not exist without the one—the lack of hydration wilts.

Fulfilling a need or a want is a partial win. To have customers believe us, based on the expectations we imply—this is where the match lights, when the money is laid down—it’s the moment we become a business. And it’s the critical reason to look up, pay attention, and focus on the expectations we build for ideal customers. 

Lessons from Home

For a business to prosper, we must manage the expectations of our ideal customer—just as we manage expectations with those we live with. In both cases, what's left unsaid can be as significant as what's explicitly stated.

Let's look at a common scenario. Our spouse heads out and says, "I'm going out to visit Heather. Will you put away the dishes?”

We say, "Okay."

What do they expect us to do? 

Of course, they want us to put away the dishes, but for some keen observers—and those with a good sense of emotional intelligence—we believe the request was greater. What they really wanted was for us to put the dishes away before they came back.

But look at the request again; that’s not what they said. There is no mention of a time. What if we don’t put the dishes away by the time they come back? Well, they’re upset, but not because they weren’t put away. They’re upset because they expected them to be put away by the time they got back. This is upsetting to them. Is this irritation unfair? Who cares, it doesn’t matter; the expectation was set whether we like it or not.

What could a pair of 9-month-old twins do for this situation? Try this scenario again; this time, we’re caring for two wild-eyed, helpless, yet self-determined little ones. Our spouse leaves saying the same thing as before. When they come back, and the dishes aren’t put away, are they upset? Probably not to the same extent. What's implied is very different; the expectation of 9-month-old twins is to expect the unexpected. 

This is what good branding does: it creates a context that shapes expectations. Just as parents of twins are given more grace due to their understood circumstances, a well-branded business establishes a clear context for how it operates and what our ideal customer should expect.

Air Mattresses and Small Markets

Branding alone doesn’t make an 80-billion-dollar company like Airbnb. But, if we’re not careful, we could spend inadvertent efforts to force a square peg idea into a round hole. 

What if Airbnb continued to imply their ideal customer was someone who enjoyed a fitful sleep on an air mattress in a stranger’s home, awakening to eggs and bacon cooked and served to you by an amateur in an unregulated kitchen? It’s a small market and one that led Airbnb to the brink of dissolving its business.

To be absolutely clear, this is the original Airbnb brand. The market of this implication was so small that they were doing better as a breakfast cereal company—no joke.2

In branding, what we imply creates an expectation. We must be very careful with the message we send. For the long-term viability of our business, this expectation needs to fit the wants of our ideal customer. 

Whether we like it or not, what we imply sets an expectation. 

Whether we like it or not, that expectation must fit the wants of our ideal customer—if we want our business to survive.

Subscribe now

There is a television trope that has a character, maybe standing in front of a coffee shop counter trying, with maybe too much effort, to make sure the barista sees them put a tip into the tip jar. The tip itself or to whom the tip goes is not important; what's important is what's implied about the character through the sight of them tipping. This is a funny bit because most of us have played this part in real life.

How we are seen means a lot to our fragile egos. In business, it can be the difference between growth or bankruptcy. And the moment we are observed—seen, heard—we are given a brand.

It's a cold realization to know branding is the act of being judged, categorized, and cataloged by others—those who love us, hate us and those who could care less. We could estimate that those who rely on personal brands know this acutely. Our minds can't help to brand, but it's needed. This judicial act has kept us safe, and on the top of the food chain.

Power and Limitations of Our Best Tool

Consciously and subconsciously, in each moment, we brand every element around us, from the floor under our bare feet to the lighting above. Any change—colder, brighter—could shift or capture our attention. Our brain is the tool that allows us to see, feel, hear, judge, categorize, and catalog. It is the most intricate, delicate, and powerful tool ever to exist, and it sits precariously on a stick atop our bodies, and for good reason.

What makes the brain truly powerful is the software it runs, our mind. Minds have the ability to pick an animal out of a complex, never-before-seen photo in 150 milliseconds.1 Having our eyes, ears, nose, and mouth a short distance from the brain speeds the response times for actions such as detecting danger, finding food, and communicating. (Or even recognizing the colors some of us use to paint our kitchen these days.)

Every second, we are bombarded—and can handle— ten million bits of data per second; that's the equivalent of 10 HD movies2. Yet while we read these words, we see the room that surrounds us. In our head, we can hear these very words spoken aloud, just as we can hear any change to the noise in the background. We understand the words, and yet, at the same time, we can have a full conversation in our minds with someone who's not in the room. But without much effort, our brains can also be distracted, swayed, or tricked.

What's 2 + 2?

Even if we tried, with the might of Captain Marvel, the number "4" would still pop into our heads. We can't stop it.

What about 17 x 24?

Chances are we're not going to answer that (And why would we? The answer is probably below.) Even if we didn't know the answer, we do have a vague intuitive knowledge that 12,609 is wrong. We also know 123 is not possible. But we wouldn't be certain if someone said it was 568.

This exercise sheds light on two modes of thinking we all have as people, business providers—and especially as customers:

• System 1: The Automatic System

• System 2: The Reflective System

These two highly creative names were coined by psychologists Keith Stanovich and Richard West.3

Struggle in Our Heads

As business leaders, we'll love being aware of the strengths of both systems. As managers, we'll fly over the moon!

Our System 1 is for quick response. It's perfect for everyday needs like when we need to recognize a face we're supposed to know at a luncheon. It helps us avoid accidents with other "idiot drivers." It takes very little mental effort and helps us multitask or quickly manage a complex environment. It thrives on pattern recognition and uses past experience to make quick decisions without stopping to analyze the details. System 1 might be the prime reason why we get better at our jobs—get into a zone—and don't notice the day has gone by.

Like our accountant should, System 2 excels in logic and reasoning. It problem-solves and makes well-thought-out decisions. If we have a complex problem, be it strategizing channels to use for market saturation in an undefined market or reading through a client's long but well intended, verbose emails, System 2 helps us evaluate evidence, consider alternatives, and come to a rational outcome. It's crucial to our critical thinking, to challenge our assumptions, and evaluate an argument.

These both have downsides that can reduce our business growth, encourage pouring out profit while chasing our tails and can be so distastefully pungent they can plague a society.

System 1's reliance on mental shortcuts makes it susceptible to biases. We come up with the same solution for different problems—we're trying to be efficient when it's likely our actions create the opposite effect. This can make errors in judgment about people—customers—and the environments we work in. And because we "know" our business well we become overconfident, causing us to overlook details, context, and perspectives. Its automatic response can lead to snap judgments based on stereotypes, reinforcing our prejudice in certain situations and of those we know little about. Since System 1 is rooted in habits, it is very resistant to change; it does not like to adapt to new information or situations. Doesn't seem a fan of new branding either.

System 2 is slow, it requires significant mental effort and concentration. Its deliberate, step-by-step nature is not always practical in fast-paced environments, and it seems that our environment gets faster with each passing day. System 2 can only handle a certain amount of information at once, which can lead to overlooking important details or struggling with multitasking. If customers or employees keep making dumb mistakes, maybe it's not them, maybe we give them too much? The process in which System 2 works in can be taxing on us and lead to our mental fatigue, especially when dealing with complex problems for extended periods.

The "Fine" Trap

Worst of all, when System 2 is overwhelmed or tired, it defaults to the less demanding System 1.

For many of us, there is no better example of this than when our minds are buried under the weight of 30 to 40 delectable frozen choices that ice cream shops often offer us. From shakes to sundaes, from Malts to Floats, from mango to Rum Raisin, from Caramel Fudge Brownie to Vanilla Bean, too many delectable choices short out our System 2 and default to the—satisfactory—System 1 answer of "One scoop of mint chocolate chip, please."

We don't think about it much, but nearly 70-80% of the things we buy are things we bought before.4 That's our lazy System 1 at work. And sadly for most of these items we continuously buy, there are—or were—better, cleaner, healthier, tastier versions available.

But do we want to replace something that "works fine" by performing an exhaustive deep evaluation, consideration, and rational thought process? Well, no. Neither do our customers. Easy wins—almost every time.

Sell Without Speaking

After we create a good product or service, the next task is to make a purchase easy. But how do we make customers see our vision for them and our value in their life without drowning them in System 2? We imply.

We spend a lot of time and effort trying to convince customers of the benefit of what we sell, but if it's not as easy as 2 + 2, we'll spend a lot more time, effort—and money on marketing and advertising. Yuck!

Let's open our company website and ask ourselves, do we overstate the obvious, or do we speak to our customer wants? Do we talk more about our business or what they get from it? Every day, in nearly every business action that will affect our customers, we need to ask ourselves, what are we implying here?

This was adapted from a presentation I gave in October of 2024. The original post can be found here—but it didn’t feel like my writing style. (Presentations are a different type of writing. Lesson learned.)

Subscribe now

This was adapted from a presentation I gave in October of 2024. This original post didn’t feel like my writing style. (Presentations are a different type of writing. Lesson learned.)

A new, better version—what I think is better—can be found here.

The moment you are observed—seen, heard—you are given a brand. The act of being judged, categorized, and cataloged has a word, that word is “Branding.” This can't be helped; you did it to me already—and within 120 milliseconds.* This is one of the best opportunities in business and it starts with what you imply.

The Power and Limitations of Our Thoughts

Our minds are powerful. We have the capacity to understand a lot in 120 milliseconds. For instance, your mind is bombarded with ten million bits of data per second; that's the equivalent of 10 HD movies*, yet while you read this, you see the room that surrounds you. You hear my words spoken clearly in your head as you can hear “that hum” in the background. You understand what I say, and yet, at the same time, you can have run a full conversation in your head.

But without much effort, the brain can also be distracted, swayed, or tricked.

What's 2 + 2?

Even if you tried to focus with the might of Captain Marvel, the number 4 would still pop into your head. You can’t stop it.

Now, off the top of your head.

What's 17 x 24?

Chances are you did not answer—and why would you, I have no reward for you. You probably figured that I’d give you the answer anyway. Even if you didn't know the answer, you had a vague intuitive knowledge that 12,609 is wrong. You also know 123 is not possible. But you wouldn't be certain if I told you it was 568.

This exercise (Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman wrote about it in his book Thinking Fast and Slow) sheds light on two modes of thinking we all have as people—and as customers: System 1: The Automatic System and System 2: The Reflective System.

The Battle in Your Customer's Head

As a business leader, you’ll love being aware of the strengths of both systems.

System 1 is for quick response. It's perfect for everyday needs like when you need to recognize a face or avoid a car accident. It takes very little mental effort and helps us multitask or manage new complex environments. It thrives on pattern recognition and uses past experience to make quick decisions without the analysis of every detail.

System 2 excels in logic and reasoning. It problem-solves and makes well-thought-out decisions. If you have a complex problem, it helps evaluate evidence, consider alternatives, and come to a rational outcome. It's crucial for critical thinking, to challenge an assumption, and evaluate an argument.

And as a business leader, you should be very aware of the downsides of both systems.

System 1's reliance on mental shortcuts makes it susceptible to biases and errors in judgment about people and environments. It can result in overconfidence, causing us to overlook details, context, and perspectives. Its automatic response can lead to snap judgments based on stereotypes, reinforcing prejudices. Because System 1 is rooted in habits, it is very resistant to change; it does not like to adapt to new information or situations.

System 2 is slow. Its deliberate, step-by-step nature is not always practical in fast-paced environments. It can only handle a certain amount of information at once, which can lead to overlooking important details or struggling with multitasking. It requires significant mental effort and concentration. This can be taxing and lead to mental fatigue, especially when dealing with complex problems for extended periods.

The "Fine" Trap: Why Your Customers Settle

Worst of all, when System 2 is overwhelmed or tired, it defaults to the less demanding System 1.

For me, there is no better example of this than my order at an ice cream shop that has over 30 to 40 delectable frozen delights. From shakes to sundaes, from Malts to Float, from mango to Rum Raisin, from Caramel Fudge Brownie to Vanilla Bean, my System 2 will default to the—satisfactory—System 1 answer of “One scoop of mint chocolate chip, please.”

Maybe you don't think about it, but I'm sure that nearly 70-80% of the things you buy are things you bought before.* That’s System 1 at work. And I can assure you that for most of these items, there are or were better, cleaner, healthier, tastier versions available.

But do you want to replace something that’s “fine” through an exhaustive deep evaluation, consideration, and rational thought process? Well, neither do your customers.

Imply: To Sell Without Speaking

After you create a good product or service, the next task is to make a purchase easy. But how do you make a customer see your vision and your value with clarity without making them drown in System 2?

It starts with what you imply.

You can spend a lot of time and effort trying to convince someone of the benefit of what you're selling, but if it's not as easy as 2 + 2, you'll spend a lot more time, effort—and money.

Open your company website in a new tab on your browser. Ask yourself, do I overstate the obvious, or do I speak to their wants? Do I talk more about my business or what they get from it?

Ask yourself, what am I implying here?

Subscribe now